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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25359820">Vaikystė</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadwitchcraft/pseuds/sadwitchcraft'>sadwitchcraft</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Bullying, Child Death, Gen, Mischa is trans and I will fight you, Sibling Bonding, Suicidal Thoughts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:26:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,845</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25359820</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadwitchcraft/pseuds/sadwitchcraft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal's memories of his childhood.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Kačiukai</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote these as character development pieces for Hannibal. I didn't like Hannibal Rising and I need something that fits with his character in the show.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hannibal arranged the delicate white flowers in the grass around the cat. The knees of his pants were damp from kneeling beside the little corpse, but he didn’t move to stand. Not yet. Not until he was done. He placed another flower and glanced over his shoulder at Mischa.</p><p>Mischa’s face wass tear stained and her arms hung limply at her sides. There was dried blood on them and pin pricks on her soft hands. So he was still breathing in hiccoughing little gasps.</p><p>He had caught her strangling the cat. The animal had been writhing in her grasp, claws sunken into her skin as it fought her for air. When he had managed to pull her hands away, the cat fell to the ground in a shuddering heap. He’d been the one to actually kill it. It wasn’t going to live very long, anyways. Not after the grip Mischa had had on it. </p><p>They hadn’t spoken about it yet. He had gathered the cat up and carried it through the garden to the spot he was kneeling now and she had trailed after him like a little ghost. She stood vigil over the cat while Hannibal gathered the flowers.</p><p>“You did an ugly thing, Mischa,” he finally spoke to her, and reached out his hand. She went to him immediately, grabbing for his fingers and spreading her blood over his skin. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” her voice came out flat, “she scratched me. I wanted to see her kittens…”</p><p>Hannibal tugged her around in front of him and hugged her, “Look, she’s beautiful now. Do you want to give her some flowers?”</p><p>She nodded against his shoulder and he released her from his arms. She gathered up some of the little white flowers Hannibal had not placed around the cat yet and stooped down, tucking one between the cat’s toes and another between its teeth. She straightened back up and returned to his arms, wreathing hers around his neck. </p><p>“Show me the kittens, Mischa.”</p><p>There were two little kittens curled up around each other in a little nest of grass. It looked like a rabbit’s nest to Hannibal, but he thought very little of it, reaching in to retrieve the delicate little animals. Their tiny claws pricked into his skin and they started to cry as he lifted them up.</p><p>“We’re their parents now,” Hannibal told Mischa as he kneeled down and showed her the kittens she had killed to see, “we have to take care of them. Feed them, keep them warm. What should we name them?”</p><p>Mischa touched them with torn and bloody fingers, leaving behind little crimson streaks on the pale fur, “Are they boys are girls?”</p><p>“They’re cats.”</p><p>“Boy or girl cats?”</p><p>Hannibal snorted at her and checked under the tails, “I think they’re girls, but they won’t care, Mischa.”</p><p>“Lola and Maja,” Mischa reached to pet the kittens again, “this one is Lola… and that’s Maja.”</p><p>They carried the kittens inside, Hannibal cradling Maja in his hands and Mischa holding Lola just a little too tightly. He found a box and some old towels and made a nest for them that would be easy to hide beneath Hannibal’s bed. Once they were hidden away, he cleaned up her hands and arms. </p><p>“Why did you really hurt her, Mischa?” Hannibal asked quietly. The cat had been friendly. She had often followed the children around the garden and rubbed up against their legs. Hannibal couldn’t imagine her keeping Mischa away from the kittens with her claws. </p><p>Mischa sniffled a little, her eyes searching his face before she answered him in a soft tone, “I was curious.”</p><p>“You wanted to see her die?”</p><p>Mischa nodded. Hannibal returned her nod and tucked some of her hair behind her ear, “Do you want to hunt birds with me tomorrow?” </p><p>The little girl nodded with enthusiasm and put her arms around Hannibal’s neck. He lifted her off the ground and carried her with him back towards his bedroom and the little box of kittens. He accepted the blame for the cat’s death – it was technically true, he had killed her. He accepted the consequences of the kittens being found under his bed, though he persuaded their father to let them raise them until they were big enough to go back outside. </p><p>He accepted the consequences of Mischa trailing after him like a shadow as he stepped into the forest, a pellet gun on his shoulder.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Širdis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hannibal catches a rabbit for his sister.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Simonetta fret her lip, watching her children make their way across the grounds, towards the trees. Hannibal had a pellet gun across his shoulders and Mischa was walking close behind him. </p><p>Her four year old daughter had run gleefully into her arms when called for supper, covered in scratches. They were not the normal scratches of childhood, but deep and frantic gauges. Her son, only ten himself, explained to her that a cat had attacked Mischa and that he had been forced to kill it. When Simonetta found the little body whimsically surrounded by flowers in the garden, her uneasiness about the situation grew. </p><p>The little cat had been sweet and had never refused the children picking her up. She was little more than a kitten herself when her belly had started to round. Simonetta turned from the window and went to Mischa’s bedroom, searching through the girl’s clothes and toys. She moved to Hannibal’s next. Her search did not take long; kitten cries were sharp little notes coming from beneath his bed. She sat with her frustration over the whole situation, holding kittens in her hands and feeding them cream. She’d put them back under Hannibal’s bed. He’d know she had found the box, and she hoped he’d come to talk to her about everything. </p><p>She hoped. She hoped against hope that what she knew had happened wasn’t the truth. Mischa was a beautiful and sweet little girl – who pulled the legs off of grasshoppers with a bell-like laugh and stepped on little toads squatting in the dirt. The ease with which Simonetta could imagine her strangling the little cat frightened her.</p><p>—</p><p>“What if it was alive?” Mischa asked and looked up at Hannibal. She was holding his knife in her hand and had been busy cleaning the rabbit he’d shot to teach her with. If she was going to wonder at death, he would provide something that could be useful. They could at least eat the rabbit… </p><p>“You would see the heart beating,” Hannibal answered her, “and the lungs breathing.”</p><p>Mischa looked back down at the spilled organs of the rabbit and poked at them with the edge of the blade. Four years old, and she was every bit as curious as he was, “…I want to see.”</p><p>Hannibal paused in thought. He could do that, he would just need time, “We need to make a trap, so we can catch the rabbit alive.”</p><p>He made a snare and set the trap, taking her by the hand so that they could sit a distance away and wait for a rabbit. They were silent, pressed shoulder to shoulder, watching the snare as if their combined gazes could manifest a rabbit. Mischa held her breath when one appeared and Hannibal could feel her excitement when it triggered the snare. </p><p>Hannibal wrestled with the rabbit, getting it by the scruff and turning it on its back. He pulled the neck back and felt it go still in his arms, alive but pliant. He didn’t want to kill the rabbit, but he knew it would move again as soon as he set it down. He needed it to be this still so that he could show his sister what she was curious about. Mischa was watching him. </p><p>It didn’t take much pressure at all to break the rabbit’s back. He tied the front legs together and set it on the ground, letting Mischa pet it while he thought about what he was going to do. It really couldn’t be that different from cleaning a rabbit under normal circumstances. </p><p>Except that it made noises. It struggled as much as it could, dark little eyes looking up at Hannibal while he cut it open. Fixed on his face while Mischa reached inside and felt the heart with her slender fingers.</p><p>“It stopped,” she breathed and Hannibal nodded. There was no plausible way the rabbit could survive them long. His sister seemed disappointed. </p><p>“Life’s precious,” Hannibal put his hand on her shoulder, “it is better that it stopped.”</p><p>They take the rabbits back to the house with them and they’re prepared for dinner. Mischa eats hers without reservation, but Hannibal can’t help but notice the bitter flavor of the meat. The rabbit had died scared. He reached for his water and looked across the table at his mother. Her eyes looked so much like the rabbit’s as she watched Mischa eat.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Lėlė</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hannibal brushes his sister's hair.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Would you like a different name?” Hannibal asked quietly, running the brush through his sister’s dark hair. She was six now, and her hair had finally reached her shoulders, having grown out since the last time it had been sheared from her head. </p><p>“I don’t know,” she answered him, watching herself in the mirror, “I’m Mischa. It doesn’t matter until someone makes it matter.”</p><p>Always an articulate child, Mischa had benefited not only from the tutors their parents hired but Hannibal’s patient instruction and near constant flow of words. She spoke with the same cadence and tone as her brother as soon as she was able to form sentences. He ran the brush through her hair again. </p><p>Their father didn’t approve. He was not a cruel man, but he didn’t understand the children that he’d sired. He always had demands of them that were contrary to their nature. He wanted to pull Hannibal from his drawings and music. He wanted Mischa to act like the son she wasn’t. Simonetta willingly placed herself as a shield between her children and the Count, drawing him away to distraction whenever he would begin his attempts to change them. He was not a cruel man, but actions taken in “love” can be cruel.</p><p>Hannibal had known his little shadow was a sister before she could articulate it, and he had told their mother as much. Simonetta waited. She gingerly dressed the little sullen child in a dress and ribbons and watched a hidden side of Mischa’s personality come to life; a smile. Laughter. Neither Simonetta nor Hannibal would give her a name that she did not want, but they pursued those smiles. There were no words available to them for what Mischa was, aside from ‘daughter’ or ‘sister’. Hannibal would come across the necessary language later in his life.</p><p>Their father had shaved Mischa’s head himself, the year before. He’d unintentionally started a war within the walls of his home as soon as he had pulled out the scissors. The family was now in an uneasy state of truce wherein the Count stepped carefully around his references to his youngest child and did not interfere with their day to day lives. Mischa had won that victory herself, standing on the ledge of the roof and threatening to give herself to the wind. Hannibal held his breath the entire time, standing beside their father and looking up at her. Brave girl. Desperate girl.</p><p>“Lėlė, look how beautiful,” he looked at her in the mirror, letting her hair fall from his hands. Her round little cheeks dimpled as she smiled. She looked so much like a porcelain doll, then. Whenever he remembered these moments, he wished he had known how easily she would break and how soon. </p><p>“Can we braid it?” she asked with enthusiasm, turning in her chair. Her foot bumped the table, knocking Hannibal’s teacup off the edge. They both stared at the shattered glassware for a moment before Hannibal sighed, “I’ll get it.”</p><p>They were both unaware of the inevitability of destruction. It was not disguised as a teacup falling off of a table, but rather a man standing alone in their yard watching the illuminated windows of their family home.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>"The name Mischa means Who Is Like God? and is of Russian origin. ... Diminutive form of Michael, from the Russian nickname Misha."</p><p>Hannibal the Cannibal and his little sister, Mike. :|<br/>Mischa is trans and I will fight a man over it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Vaiduoklis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hannibal is sent to the orphanage.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’d become an aching ghost.</p><p>His case worker drove him to the orphanage herself, when it was determined that it was the only place he had to go. He had an uncle, of course, but they hadn’t been able to reach him. They couldn’t keep him indefinitely in the house they’d pulled him from, or any of their homes. The quiet child couldn’t haunt the police station.</p><p>They may as well have delivered him to a hellsmouth. The other children were dirty and loud, running through the halls of the converted home. There were too many of them for the rooms that were available, and the smattering of shaved heads that Hannibal saw told him that lice had recently been a problem. Being so suddenly immersed in an entirely different world revealed just how isolated he had been at his family’s estate. Mischa had been the only other child he had known, and both his mother and father had made a point of talking to their children like people rather than children. The broken and unintellectual way that some of the smaller children spoke set Hannibal’s teeth on edge. Mischa never sounded like that…Mischa…</p><p>She was an aching ghost, sitting in his chest. At night he would wrap his arms around himself and pretend that she was with him. He would set his own fingers to his pulse and feel for life. He did that until his dreams and memories mixed together, and he felt the clamor of her dead skin beneath his fingertips. He’d laid with her even then, curled around the body he was eating, desperate to feel the pulse of a heart he had already consumed. </p><p>He remained silent, having not spoken a word since he was pulled from the darkness. Some of the other children seemed to take offense to his silence and tried to bully words out of him. He ignored it. He ignored it, until that bullying was directed at another child. </p><p>She had hair like Mischa. That was how he justified it to himself at first. The older boy had started by pulling her hair, but then he had pushed the little girl down – the look in his eye was familiar to Hannibal. In one moment, Hannibal was sitting on the stone stairs. In the next, he was upon the other boy, knocking him into the dirt. His hands gripped into his hair and pulled sharply, pushed harder to make his skull meet the ground with a sickening thud. The little girl screamed and the staff came to pull him off. He got into trouble for similar attacks two more times before smaller children began to gravitate towards him. They were safe under the wine-colored eyes of the quiet boy. Safe in a way that the crueler children weren’t. </p><p>The language of violence was met with violence. The three boys that Hannibal had attacked recovered. They shared their grievances with each other and pulled him out of bed one night. There was little satisfaction in beating someone who wouldn’t cry or grunt in pain. </p><p>The staff members were able to figure out what happened easily enough. The three boys came away from the encounter covered in scratches and bites. Hannibal refused to get out of bed with his injuries, and the four of them were taken to the hospital. The three boys were moved on or adopted, but Hannibal remained. It didn’t matter to him where they went. He’d recover. He was a survivor. He was adapting to this, and the comings and goings of lesser people were irrelevant. </p><p>He had one of the younger children in his lap when his uncle came to get him. The blond headed boy was reading to Hannibal, going over the words with the slow precision of someone who had just learned to read. Hannibal ignored his uncle speaking to him, tapping on the page and encouraging the boy to keep reading. It surprised him, when Robert didn’t snatch the book away or react negatively. Robert looked at the two children and sat down on the ground beside them. He waited until the little child finished reading the book to Hannibal and scampered away. </p><p>“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. My wife and I were in Japan, and the letter was delayed.”</p><p>Hannibal said nothing. </p><p>“But I’m here now, and I’m going to take you back home with me. They tell me you don’t talk. That’s…surprising. I remember you as a precocious child. You’re… you look so much like him,” Robert’s voice dropped with grief and Hannibal just watched him. He should have been able to empathize with what Robert was feeling for the death of his sibling. Mischa’s aching ghost wouldn’t let him. </p><p>Hannibal missed the dirt and the noise of the children in the quiet car that took him away from the orphanage. He’d pass out of their memories, nothing more than a silent guardian that they had never truly known.</p>
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